The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [113]
“Flanders,” Pall Hallvardsson declared, “is such a place as can hardly be imagined by Greenlanders, or even by folk such as myself, whose eye has become familiar with the wastes of the western ocean. In Flanders, a man did not wait for folk to visit him, or look out his door for them, squinting into the breeze and making of every shadow the longed-for guest, but was instead so beset with folk that he might rather wish to be left alone to hold his thoughts in peace. And all of these folk were seized with aims and desires many times every day, for the very commerce that they had among themselves put them in a frenzy of conflicting notions. All men rushed about as fast as possible, and in addition spoke quickly. Well, these things are outlandish for me to think upon now, but when I was a boy they seemed ordinary. I spent enough time bemoaning the tedium of Drongen. How I longed to be taken along when the cellarer of the monastery went to do business in Ghent, which was not far away.”
Gunnar said, “Was this Ghent another and larger monastery, then?”
Pall Hallvardsson’s eyes opened wide, and he ran his hands over his head. Finally he said, “No, indeed. Ghent is such a compounding of mankind and buildings and animals and machines and noises and smells and sights and colors that it might seem to be Hell at one moment and Heaven at the next.” Then he considered for a moment and added, “Or Hell to one man and Heaven to the next. For folk lie about in the street who have neither arms nor legs, but only a voice to cry out to those passing for alms, and children raise their faces to you as you pass and they are lepers, with no noses and great sores eating into their flesh, and many of these folk have no homes, but only lean against a particular bit of wall, day and night, summer and winter, until they are no longer there, and have died and been tossed into mass graves, for these cities spawn cities of the dead, as well.”
Gunnar said, “But there is Heaven, too?”
“Of a sort. There are houses where rich men have gathered together belongings of such grace and beauty of form that the eye rather eats them up than looks at them. Many statues might be placed about a garden where flowering trees and a carpet of blossoms perfume the air, and fountains spew mists into sky, and amidst it all, a dwelling rises thirty ells with towers and winding staircases and banners afloat and the sunlight bouncing off a galaxy of window lights. Such a thing might be called heaven, or paradise, although those men who dwell within are fallen, as all men are, through the sin of Adam.”
Now Gunnar reflected for a moment, and asked, “When as a child you looked out in the morning, what did you look out upon?”
Sira Pall Hallvardsson closed his eyes. “Neither mountains nor oceans, neither sheep nor fish drying racks, but always this, a little space of green between the dormitory and the church which was a neat pattern of herbs and vegetables planted in the form of a cross with four equal arms inside a circle which was itself inside a square, and behind this a row of ancient apricot trees set against the church wall. Along the edge of this garden ran a paved path, and upon this path, no matter how early I might look out, I would see robed monks or else servingmen going among the dormitory and the kitchen house and the church and the rectory offices, and if the stones of this path were not flat and smooth and clean, it was said that in this way the path to heaven was strewn with snares and overgrown with sin, unless all were to exercise the utmost vigilance, and so the little boys went out and tore up the grass and moss growing between the stones, and swept the stones carefully with bunches of twigs. That is one thing I remember clearly.